( closed )

[darkart]

CHARACTERS: severus snape & harry potter.
LOCATION: science labs-ish.
WARNINGS: tba? probably none.
SUMMARY: being pillars of in-universe mythology sucks occasionally.


Severus is irritated. This is not a shocking deviation from everyday life, to be certain, but today he's irritated for a handful of very specific reasons - reasons that are distracting him here and there from the work he's trying to get done. As usual he's sitting at the back of the main lab area, almost cordoned off as its own entity at this point, plants and samples spread out to one side, notes on the other. He's been going over and over what is supposedly the Wolfsbane potion all day; not everything required to brew it exists in space. The Granger girl having essence of dittany with her helps, but it's just one thing.

He can complete it. He knows not just from stubborn determination but from experience in reworking potions that it's possible - he's good enough at it to judge from a distance. Engineering the exact details is taking time, though, and the constant headache that twists between his eyes isn't making it go any quicker.

In a moment of frustration Severus drops his pencil on the desk and presses his forehead into his hands, as if he can press out all the errant thoughts and worries. He's angry at everything and not even Occluding is helping. A moment later he hears something at the entrance to the labs and he snaps "What?" as he raises his head, glare already at maximum voltage.

--Oh.

Comments

[thebreakingwave]

"I was an ass." Harry isn't sure if he feels grateful, guilty, or angry that none of the security people came to talk to him after Arima. No one asked if he was complicit, or to what degree he had known about what was due to happen.

"Long before you came on-board, Mairon and I got our memories entangled and we saw into each other - not everything, not even a fraction, but a glimpse and what I saw in him was good. We became friends and there was no trouble." He saw the making of a world and it was overwhelmingly beautiful. "Then Melkor came."

"The elves attacked and he was hurt, but there was a truce after that. I went and spoke to Galadriel and she told me about a war on their world, but that it had passed. That here and now, they wouldn't fight, and that so long as the truce held, there was hope. That I should be wary, that they were dangerous, and what each party said matched up." With very small, subtle differences in shading.

"And, like an ass, I'd thought that the truce would hold. Melkor and Mairon listened to me and they didn't care that I could do magic, they didn't bar me from talking about or performing it. They had interesting things to say, to show me, and none of it was dark or dangerous. None of it was cruel or hurtful and I genuinely thought that after months, I'd found real friends. Which is why I didn't see it until I woke up, on Arima, and it had all gone wrong. I fought, I fell, I survived their displeasure, and made it back onboard." He can't hide the way one of his hands flexes, as if remembering an injury. There were several, but they're well-hidden now.

"After, I sought out Galadriel to ask what happened, how could we all have been so deceived, and she said she knew. She knew, but she was too scared to speak, and assumed that I'd be beneath their notice." It's pitiful, really. He'd thought the elves might've been better than the Ministry, but really, they're all just the same.

[darkart]

Severus listens. He can muster that much. But the more Harry speaks, the less impressed he becomes. Perhaps it should be a comfort that there appears to be no intentional duplicity involved - and yet he just feels gnawing anger at the fact that he can't let anyone do anything on their own, ever, without it getting fucked up all to hell.

"Someone was very kind to me, once," he says at length. His temper is there in his words, barely restrained. "He encouraged my magic. He treated me with respect."

That statement gets left alone for a moment. Severus stares at Harry, gaze like iron. There is no question that he means Voldemort.

"You spoke to me of frustration and humiliation at being treated like a child despite the war you've fought and the experience you've had. I gave you that courtesy and respected your claims." His voice is low, in that slightly terrifying way that's worse than his explosions. "I watched you from afar liaise with beings whose magic left such an impression on the world around them I could practically feel it in the air. I said nothing, because you have fought the Dark Lord, and you should know already what that feels like. Why," he leans forward slightly, "would you need some elf to take you by the hand and explain to you how darkness works?"

[thebreakingwave]

"I never once saw them do anything dark or cruel. I felt nothing amiss. No unkindness, no darkness. If I had ..." He's not sure what he would've done and if it's worth speculating about now. "If I had, I would've asked them about it and probably ended up hollowed out and puppeted."

"They way I see it, there's one of two answers. The best case scenario is that I'm an idiot. That I was stupid and didn't see what was there, that they'd gotten inside before I could tell and kept me under for months and I was too weak, too eager to notice." He doesn't back down or look away, but there's a slight wince as he rubs at his shoulder. "I hope that's what it was. That's the most reasonable answer. The alternative is that I spent so long sharing bits of body and soul with another that I can't taste that sort of magic when it's used around me."

"A single instance, yes, I can pick that out. But a constant hum in the background? I don't know."

[darkart]

"You're making excuses," Severus says, unkindly. "That elf-king of theirs had his mind twisted into a babbling child's because of that thing. He attacked Nuala. He was certainly the shadow her brother railed about." Severus can use the archive function. It's quite handy. (Having an elf ally who will tell him things is also handy.) "If you were told anything at all about a war, you heard about genocide, or however either of them chose to dress it up in conversation. That you heard it and decided that a cease-fire meant they were still all right, that it absolved them or made anyone suitable--"

Severus sits back in his chair, crossing his arms. "You shouldn't have needed anything special to sort it out. Just common sense. Of course they picked you out as a target to use if that's your thought process. You're lucky it wasn't worse. And you-- brought me Riddle's diary and had me destroy it while you were going along with them."

Aha. Here we come to the issue of lies.

"I run enough unsightly errands for Albus Dumbledore. You don't have the right to ask a damn thing of me if this is how it'll be. Not like that."

[thebreakingwave]

Harry has his own opinions about the elves and that they're not friends, but he's managing to keep a civil tongue and isn't eager to change that.

"I'm neither powerful enough, nor clever enough, nor have any reason to try and pointlessly manipulate or jockey for power. I don't ...I needed help to destroy the diary and I trusted that you'd know how." It's clear that he doesn't understand what he's supposedly lied about. "I didn't want to bother you and I would've asked Mairon, but he was in stasis that month."

[darkart]

Who gives a damn about friends? Harry should have the minimum brain cells to rub together to figure out 'people who commit genocide and run around mindbreaking people with magic = bad', whether or not he likes the people who end up hurt in the equation. Severus doesn't care about the elves, he's not worried about their welfare, he's just capable of looking at the situation and going 'Wow, that's not good.'

"Stop it. You can't be a war veteran tired of being treated like a fool and too stupid to function." Severus is not being nice, but it's different than the rages he'll get into when he's older, when he has nothing else. At this stage of his life he's still treating it like a relatively normal argument. (That said, Snape mad at you is never strictly pleasant.) "It's good you didn't take anything to one of them, and apparently I should have dragged you away from the both of them by your bloody ear. You want me to treat you like anything but a child from now on, you have to behave like an adult. And you don't get to have me do your dirty work for you while you play around with shades of ignorant duplicity with dark beings."

[thebreakingwave]

Harry could argue that he honestly didn't know. That he didn't see or feel anything dark, that he never knew about what happened to Thranduil or heard about some genocide. This is the first he's heard of those things and he tries to hide his surprise and anger, but he's not sure how well it's working.

Snape is being unkind, but he's not cruel and it leaves Harry feeling wrong-footed. Maybe it's just further sign of his innate stupidity or tender-heartedness, but he wishes there was something more he could do to change the other man's future.

"Alright. What can I do to assist you now?"

[darkart]

Severus would probably laugh. Actually laugh. It's one thing to think Harry might have been forcing himself to be blind to it, desperate for a sense of approval and belonging-- Severus even understands that. He understands the magnetism of people with ancient magic, and had one of them approached him? Yes, he probably would have consented to dealing with them. Who knows how it would have gone for someone like him, both predisposed to knowing better and to being susceptible to it. But he wouldn't have been so blind. And to have Harry - Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, Sainted Savior of Everything - claim No, it really is just that I'm this stupid would be unbelievable.

It's maddening.

But maybe fitting for someone doomed with James Potter's genetic contributions, he thinks viciously, and palms over his forehead in irritation. He almost snaps 'Nothing!' and sends him away, so unimpressed by the dull subject change. "Send a Patronus to Lupin," he all but growls, "See if he'll respond to you."

[thebreakingwave]

In all honesty, it was probably a little of both. He was naive and he overlooked more than he should've because they were kind to him and he admired their knowledge and skill. If Arima hadn't come when it did, Harry can admit to himself that he would've tried to pull away.

Being thought of as an idiot is preferable to knowing better and not doing something about it.

Harry nods and after a moment casts the charm. His patronus is bright and defined enough so that the feathers flutter and move in an invisible breeze. He looks at the barn owl for a moment with a strange expression and then sends it off with a message. Remus, can I trouble you with something?

[darkart]

Eventually, Severus will get the hell over it. Maybe. Eventually he'll sort of get over it. Even without the added ten years of his spirit being ground down into nothing but Dumbledore's agent, he's still grudging, unfair, and impossible to please. When faced with something legitimate like this, it's just that much more intense.

It's a lot nicer than his own message, when the charm glides off. ('Don't be stupid.')

They get to wait in awkward silence.

For a while.

"Fucking hell," Severus says after a length of no response and no return of the Patronus, angry. "That idiot."

[thebreakingwave]

"What on earth could he be looking for out there?" If it's that the ship has taken hold of his mind, then there's little they can do to stop him, but if he's actually found someone, then maybe they ought to? Harry isn't sure.

"I'll try to contact him again later, but either he's being stubborn or the ship has him."

[darkart]

"There is a finite difference between being stubborn and hiding in a plummeting spiral of self-pity and despair," Severus complains, "the latter of which Lupin is a bloody professional at. Passive-aggressive responsibility-dodging arsehole."

Tell us how you really feel, Snape.

"Looking for people out in the ship, that fool. I don't know why I even bother to check up on him."

Because he made a promise, basically, an no matter how much of a prick Severus is, he keeps his word. Even if he seems really, really pissed off about it right now.

[thebreakingwave]

Harry certainly does not smothering anything resembling a snort at Snape's description. He likes Lupin, he does, and he knows that this has been a great shift for him, but it feels almost sacrilegious to speak ill of the (not yet) dead.

"I should get going, but I'll send out another patronus later. If he decides to contact me, you'll be the first to know."

[darkart]

"Fine."

Severus jerks a hand dismissively. As is becoming usual, Harry is of no use to him. He's still bothered by all the things they've discussed - up to and including not considering maybe caring at all about his mother - but like hell if he's not going to take the opportunity to make him go away. As ever, he knows he'll be dealing with all of this himself anyway.